A high power X-band receiver protector

An X-Band radar receiver protector has been developed based on the principle of multipacting. The protector (referred to as a multipactor) is a T-R (transmit-receiver) power absorbing limiter capable of limiting 50 kW peak RF power (3 kW average) to 5 watts. The multipactor exhibits spike leakage energy of less than 0.2 ergs, a recovery time of less than 1.0 nano seconds and passive insertion loss of less than 0.7 dB. Following the multipactor limiter is a solid state limiter which reduces the output RF power of the multipactor down to approximately 50 milliwatts.